This is the longest I’ve had a Mac in probably a decade. My current Mac—an early 2009 17-inch MacBook Pro—has been a workhorse for over three years; I bought it when it debuted. I originally bought a 17-inch model, not because I needed the size but because it because it was the only model I could get with a matte screen, and I really disliked the mirror-like glossy screens Apple had moved to.

For years, I’ve been on a twoish year cycle with Mac laptops, but Apple hadn’t really released anything that felt significantly better than my current one until recently. Sure, they’ve been faster, but also hotter and my MBP has been “fast enough” and stable.

I’ve had that two-year itch for awhile now, and I’ve had my eye on a MacBook Air. And now, with the intro of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, my urge to have a powerhouse is tugging at me. But, uncharacteristically, I’ve decided to wait it out. I’m feeling a small amount of pain now that Mountain Lion is out and my Mac is too old to do Airplay streaming to the Apple TV and can’t do PowerNap; I don’t think I’ve ever held on to a Mac long enough to not be able to use new OS features. But I’m waiting, and here’s what I’m waiting for:

First, now that I’ve had a taste of an iPad with a persistent LTE connection, I want that in my laptop too. Particularly if I went the MBA route, I just want it to always be connected as soon as I open the lid. Yes, I can share the connection from my iPad to my laptop, but I’m spoiled now, and if I had an MBA, I’d probably take either it or the iPad to a meeting or wherever I might think I needed a device. Either way, it has to be connected.

Second, I want SSDs to continue to get bigger and cheaper. One thing I’ve done to expand the life of my 17-incher is replace the DVD drive with an 128 GBSSD that I use as my boot drive; the OS and most home directory-based files that are accessed frequently are there. I also have a 500 GB, 7200 RPM spinning drive for big things like media files and stuff I want to have on me, but access less frequently. I’m hoping that 750 GB isn’t out of reach next year. The SSD is fast, but the system does slow down when the spinning drive has to wake up for an access.

Lastly, I just want the new MacBook Pros to get Retina-ized across the line. The current Retina is beautiful, and is normally the kind of early-adopter bandwagon I’d jump on, but this time I think there might be quite a bit of benefit to waiting out the first revision and push throughout the lineup. Perhaps there’ll even be a Retina Display on the higher-end MBA, making my choice harder again.

It makes me a bit sad to be practical this time around, but I’m hoping it’ll be worth it.

It’s official, and it looks like the rumors were pretty much spot-on.

As described, a compact which is essentially a “repackaged Rebel T4i”, it’s a pretty compelling camera. Sounds fast (although most specs don’t make it sound like it’s quite as fast-handling as the Nikon 1, but that remains to be seen) and I’m sure the quality will be great. The price is right, at $800 with the 22mm f/2 lens we saw in the rumors. Now that we know the sensor is APS-C, that’s going to be a 35mm equivalent field-of-view, which is perfect in my book.

There are some new accessories too, and leading the charge is the Mount Adapter EF-EOS M, which will allow Canon’s EF and EF-S mount lenses to attach to the M. That’s pretty great, especially since the article says Canon have promised “no functionality or quality will be lost”. That’s a big plus over Nikon’s offering, which doesn’t do AF-C. They also introduced a small speedlite, the 90 EX. It doesn’t look quite as cool as the little pivoting, battery-less Nikon 1 unit, but it’s still a nice addition. More importantly, the camera has a hotshoe that is compatible with other Canon speedlites, which is pretty awesome.

More awesome is the ST-E3-RT Transmitter to attach to that hotshoe. It’s a PocketWizard-like radio transmitter for Canon’s wireless flash system. The idea of that on a small camera is pretty damn sweet. There’s also a GPS receiver, which I still don’t understand why they can’t fit inside. Like the Nikon, I love the functionality, but hate the extra accessory.

Somewhat strangely, Canon is positioning this as a video camera first and foremost, which instantly leaves me cold, although it does explain the lack of a viewfinder and the touchscreen-centric controls. It also explains the Stepless Motor lenses (STM). Canon is calling this a companion for videographers the way their G1 X is for photographers. Ugh. They still don’t quite get it, in my opinion. They, like Nikon, appear to be too afraid of cannibalizing their low-end DSLRs to really go after this market. I have a feeling that both might just lose out to Olympus, Sony, and others if they don’t wake up soon.

At this point, were I in the market for a small camera, I think I’d probably head toward the Olympus OM-D. Hell, I’ve considered getting one just to have a nice new camera to hang the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 from. I’ll let the market mature a bit, though and I am curious what the next move Nikon makes is. I’m still very happy with the handling of the Nikon 1 V1, but there’s no doubt there are big gaps to fill in that line, and if they don’t hurry, they’ll be in trouble.

Firstly, I won’t spoil anything substantial that you don’t already know if you’ve watched the trailers.

tl;dr:Don’t believe what the media has been spouting. _The Dark Knight Rises is a great movie, and a superb way to close the trilogy. If you liked the other two movies in the series, you’ll like this one._

The Movie

I remember being surprised at how, er, dark The Dark Knight was and I was surprised in the same way by this one. This movie does a good job bringing a sense of despair to the audience. That takes time, and The Dark Knight Rises uses a lot of its two hours and forty-five minutes building that dread. The inevitable rebuilding of Batman goes far deeper into the second act than I’d have guessed it would, even bleeding into the third. That ends up being a good thing, although it means there’s less Batman than you’d guess, this being a Batman movie and all.

I like Anne Hathaway a lot, and I think she was a better-than-average Catwoman, though they never reference her by that name. She doesn’t have any quasi-super abilities that she sometimes does in the comics; she’s purely a good burglar. She tends to be under-the-radar as far as the overarching story of the movie goes, although she’s key from Batman’s perspective. She’s like a curiosity that keeps popping up in parallel to the main plot. I find it refreshing that the movie had the guts to not put the hot woman in the catsuit in too many scenes. Hathaway acts the part well, and more subtly than her recent predecessor. She’s a somewhat interesting character, and there could clearly be a lot more to do with her if they wanted to.

Alfred and Lucious Fox are like the devil-and-angel sitting on Bruce Wayne’s shoulders, each pulling him to what they think is in his best interest. Having these roles played by such great actors really pays off in a couple scenes.

Bane is one of the few characters that I like better in the movie adaptation of a comic book. Bane was (forgive me) banal in the comics: a brute who got the better of Batman in what I thought was a weak story. This movie very loosely tells a similar tale (and steals a key scene), but with Bane remade with motivations that fit this trilogy.

The movie, as I mentioned, is very long. That’s a quality I’ve grown to despise in modern movies, but I felt like they really were telling a story the whole time, and it still felt like it was going too fast in a couple of parts. It’s well-directed, and a marvel to watch. I found it to be far better than the reviews I’ve read lead me to believe.

The Unfortunate Context

The shootings in Colorado very early today at the first showings were the elephant in the room while watching the movie. This impacted the experience in a couple of ways. I went to see the movie at the AMC Cupertino, which is normally jam-packed on weekend nights, and I figured I was in for a doozy of a crowd. Instead, there was no line, and the theater was only about half- to maybe two-thirds full at an early evening showing. The news all day has been about tying the movie to the motivations of the madman, which is too bad. I have a lot of feelings about the shooting, but I’ll leave them for now and perhaps write about them later.

More importantly, The Dark Knight Rises holds little back in many scenes where Gotham (which is essentially Manhattan) is overtaken. Watching armed men fire into screaming crowds on-screen was pretty hard to take this close to the shootings, and I found it impossible to not be drawn out of the story. I’m pretty good at disassociating things like the shooting from logically unrelated things like a movie, but that was pretty hard during these scenes.

So, this is a great movie marred by a terrible real-life event and The Dark Knight Rises will be viewed for at least the near future in the context of that tragedy. I still highly recommend seeing it.